How To Win Friends and Influence People In The Digital Age by DaleCarnegie

ey completed their assigned work. ey went home. ere was movement, but few if any were moved, inside or outside the office walls. He wanted to understand why. Over the rst two months of the following year he spent a lot of time with the people who really ran the Department of Education—the career civil service workers who pressed forward no matter which political party lled the White House. He came to the sobering realization that while he stood on the bridge, turning the wheel, the wheel wasn’t connected to anything below. And since he had no authority to hire or re from the civil service ranks, the only way he could in uence positive progress in the department was by winning them over. e problem was, they’d seen politicians come and go. ey’d grown tired and cynical. ey’d given up on deriving inspiration from the top. e secretary’s wife suggested the way to win them over was by reminding them he was passionate about education, and to do so not with new words but with new actions. “Go to schools, spend time with kids. Do retail. Everyone will notice because these are the things they really care about.” “I don’t do retail,” he huffed. “I’m the secretary of education. I do wholesale.” His wife, the daughter of a salesman, smiled. “Darling,” she said, “if you can’t do retail, you’ll never do wholesale.” She was right, and the secretary knew it. For the next year he toured the country, rolled up his sleeves, read stories, listened to teachers, and was reminded how much he loved retail education. It was a personal victory. More signi cant, however, was the effect his actions had on his employees. eir passion was revived—passion for their daily tasks, for better education, for more opportunities for more families. ey were inspired by the secretary’s work because his actions had accomplished something the speeches and sumptuous gatherings had not. ey had tapped a core desire of the tireless Department of Education workers: purpose. ey wanted to believe again. ey just needed to be reminded that their work still mattered. e secretary offered this reminder, and it dramatically turned the tide. 11 In our rushed world, it is easy to forgo the secretary’s level of analysis. So much of our digital communication is one-way that we come to believe we have limited opportunity to uncover another’s perspective. While we

communicate with more and more people every day, we also become more insular in our approach. We are far more inclined to focus on how we can best broadcast our points from our own perspective, quickly, broadly, or both. Isn’t this what we witness all around us? It is easy to get so caught up in the fray that we forget what we are aiming for: connection, in uence, agreement, collaboration. We can start to believe the battle is won by mere frequency and occasional originality—useful strategies in the right context, but greatly insufficient as your only in uence strategies. ere is a good side, however, to this constant barrage of onesided broadcasting, which spans the spectrum from corporate posturing to celebrity positioning. Today, with a few keystrokes, we can better educate ourselves about other people’s perspectives and goals. Earlier we discussed the dangers of using your digital space to spout off your complaints. Most of us are more discerning about what we divulge. We reveal what matters to us, what we think about often, what we love and like and hope to see happen soon. ese tidbytes of information add up to a body of knowledge that offers clues or even clear windows to our core desires. is knowledge is invaluable where in uence in concerned because, like the calf that just wanted more food, we only move toward what moves us.

P a r t 2 S i x Wa y s t o M a k e a L a s t i n g Im p r e s s i o n

1 Take Interest in Others’ Interests When it comes to learning the quickest way to win friends, shall we turn to the person with the most followers on Twitter, the blogger with the most Diggs, the savviest salesperson, or the most powerful politician? While each can boast of abundant followership, and while each will likely offer good advice, such people might not be our best role models. In fact, our best role models might not be people at all. Perhaps dogs are. Whether we’ve stepped outside for two minutes or traveled for two weeks, dogs welcome our return as if we were heroes. ey never demean us or mock us or stand us up for dates. ey exist to befriend us, to orbit around us as the center of their existence. Are they ever without pure joy just being in our presence? Dogs are called man’s best friend for a reason. Stories of canine loyalty are the stuff of legend. e great poet Byron wrote of his dog Boatswain, “He had all the virtues of man and none of his vices.” 1 ese are also the stories of our day. Jon Katz’s A Dog Year and John Grogan’s Marley & Me were nothing if not love stories written by men grieved by their dogs’ passing. Dogs know by some divine instinct that you can make more friends in minutes by becoming genuinely interested in other people than you can in months of trying to get other people interested in you. It is more than a furry, four-legged platitude. It is a primary principle without which no person can gain real relational traction with another. e great irony of human relations— especially when viewed through the lens of a canine—is that our longing for signi cance in the lives of others should be so simple to meet, yet we complicate the matter; our biggest struggle is sel shness, the single greatest deterrent to amity. at we are interested primarily in ourselves is not a phenomenon as new as Twitter or Facebook. It predates Friendster and MySpace. It came before cell phones and email and the Internet. In the 1930s, when Carnegie was penning the original manuscript of this book, the New York Telephone Company made

a detailed study of telephone conversations to nd out which word was the most frequently used. e personal pronoun “I” was used 3,900 times in 500 telephone conversations. Our sel shness, or more politely our self-interest, populates the morals of the great fables. Icarus swoops and soars into the sun’s warmth, melting the wax on his wings, sending him plummeting to the ocean below because he’s thinking only of himself, ignoring the pleas of his father. Peter Rabbit incurs Mr. McGregor’s wrath by ignoring his mother’s commands to stay out of his garden. Why did Adam and Eve disobey God in the Garden of Eden? ey were thinking only of themselves. is self-interest isn’t something anyone is likely to change. It is a gravitylike reality. We are born with innate ght-or- ight tendencies. at is to say, our body of words and actions trends toward self-preservation. Yet we often forget to consider whom we are really ghting against and to what destination we are eeing. If we are not mindful, our self-defense can turn into self-detention, keeping us from meaningful interaction and in some cases cutting us off from interpersonal progress altogether. If we are not mindful, the destination to which we ee can become a lonely, isolated isle. Like the city of Troy whose walls of great defense became the source of its great demise, we can insulate ourselves to the point of interpersonal futility. “It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men,” wrote Alfred Adler, the famous Austrian psychotherapist, “who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from such individuals that all human failures spring.” at’s quite an audacious statement. But it is a statement borne out in fact. Humanity’s greatest failures, from the killing elds of Cambodia to the collapse of Lehman Brothers, are the result of people interested only in themselves, damn the collateral damage. ese are extreme examples, but the everyday versions are just as disturbing. e general counsel busted for taking a bribe never thought of the shareholders who were counting on that stock for their retirement. e pro athlete who took performance-enhancing drugs never considered how his actions would

affect his teammates, his team’s future, or the sport he claims to love. e husband and father caught in his lie was more interested in preserving a double life than protecting his family’s hearts. Still, self-preservation’s downfall is about more than catastrophes. Look back at the quote “It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men who has the greatest difficulties in life.” Adler is simply explaining that a selfcentered life is the most problematic life one can live. A life lived in constant interpersonal struggle. Few true friends. Shallow, short-lived in uence. is can seem a foreboding principle to embody in an age in which we are rewarded for brooding over and broadcasting our interests far and wide. But the ancient maxim is still true: “For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” 2 Our effectiveness with others is ultimately a matter of motive and merchandise. Why, in the end, are you communicating and what, in the end, are you promoting? Today people are more informed and subsequently more intuitive than ever. Most of us immediately see through a person whose messaging is only for personal bene t. We see gimmicks a mile away. We run from underhanded approaches. Instead, we gravitate to what feels real and lasting. We embrace those whose messaging offers mutual bene t. 3 Andrew Sullivan, one of the world’s top political bloggers, has considered such matters for more than a decade. Once the youngest-ever editor in chief of the venerable New Republic, Sullivan was diagnosed HIV-positive in the early 1990s, when it was still a death sentence. After leaving that post, Sullivan became one of the Internet’s rst big political bloggers, with his site hitting more than 300,000 unique visitors per month in 2003. One of the things that set Sullivan apart from his peers was an intentional interaction with his readership. He wanted his blog, e Daily Dish, to be about more than politics; he wanted loyal readers, and he genuinely wanted to know more about the people who followed him. He came up with the idea for “View from Your Window,” in which he asked his readers to submit shots of the world outside their homes. As with most things on the Internet, he had no idea if it would hit. “I wanted to see their worlds,” he explained, “I was giving all of these people all of this access to mine, but oneway interactions are ultimately boring.” 4 It was no small gesture,

and it soon boosted his relationships with readers. After the gregarious feature was introduced, Sullivan’s work became the centerpiece for the Atlantic Monthly’s online strategy, and that site’s traffic increased by 30 percent. It is no surprise that Sullivan’s robust blog following remained when he moved his blog to Newsweek and e Daily Beast. People are attracted to people who care about what interests them. e irony of this principle—take interest in others’ interests—is that its effectiveness is predicated on others thinking of themselves. Its effectiveness essentially requires others being self-interested. ere are two things to say about this. First, self-interest in its purest form is part of human nature— ght or ight is fact. is principle does not deny self-interest’s existence in all our lives. Instead it indicates that most people, on most days, forget the other side of the human equation—everyone else. Most take self-interest to the self-centered end of the spectrum. e effectiveness of this principle is therefore tied directly to the infrequency with which most choose to think outside themselves on most days. e one who chooses, conversely, to take interest in other’s interests on a daily basis is set apart. We remember such people, befriend them, and come to trust them more deeply. In uence is ultimately an outcropping of trust—the higher the trust, the greater the in uence. Second, the pinnacle of this principle is not complete self-denial. Notice the principle does not read, “Replace your interests with others’ interests.” It instead reads, “Take interest in others’ interests,” and that is the secret to its application. When you incorporate others’ interests into your own—not merely for the sake of clarifying your market or ascertaining your audience— you nd that your interests are met in the process of helping others. Consider bestselling author Anne Rice, who has sold more than 110 million books in her lifetime. Her career began and achieved sustained success with her famed vampire books, including Interview with a Vampire, which was made into a major motion picture. While she is a uniquely gifted writer, no small part of her success has been her genuine interest in her readers. She responds to every bit of her readers’ mail. is meant, at one time, employing three people full-time to meet the demand.

Her interest in others has never been feigned for the sake of book sales. “It seemed to me,” she explains, “that people were kind and generous enough to have an interest in me. How could I not respond? I wanted people to know that I appreciated their letters and I appreciated them.” 5 Rice has recently taken to Facebook and Twitter, giving her more direct contact with her fans. “Oh, it’s so wonderful,” she said. “We’re having a conversation about oh so many things.” 6 She calls the community “People of the Page” and wrote recently, “I think we must remember that Facebook, and the Internet, are what we make of them. is page has accomplished something extraordinary and perhaps unique. It is truly a community, in nitely more powerful than the sum of its parts, and I thank you for making it what it is: for participating here in so many vital and inspiring discussions.” 7 is result is as important for the owner of a business as it is for authors and bloggers. In his cult favorite treatise, Bass-Ackward Business, business owner Steve Beecham summarily admits, I have never considered myself a brilliant businessman. . . . e country was experiencing one of the great re nance booms of all time and . . . I jumped in with both feet. Unfortunately, the re nance well dried up before my feet got wet. I went six months without a deal and when I did nally close one it was for my brother’s home. . . . Instead of starting over, I set out to nd a way to make the business work. is is when my fate started to turn.8 Beecham had already failed in two previous business ventures—a retail store and a recycling enterprise—prior to his attempt in the mortgage business. He had every reason to pack it up and head back to school or consider letting someone else hold the reins. He resisted long enough to see that his approach was wrong from the beginning. He was after business when he should have been after relationships.

He goes on to describe an unexpected encounter in a parking lot with a sel ess celebrity that taught him the visceral value of taking interest in others’ interests: Before I could get another word in, he started asking me questions . . . Where’d you grow up? What do you do for a living? What high school did you go to? What are your kids’ names? I left the encounter feeling ten feet tall. . . . In a subtle and unassuming way, he’d elevated himself in my mind. e encounter taught Beecham an invaluable lesson. From that day forward, he committed to asking thoughtful questions of every new person he met and every acquaintance he didn’t know very well. “Speci cally,” he explains, “I decided to become a problem solver and a promoter . . . with no strings attached. is is when my business began to not only turn around; it began to take off.” In a matter of months Beecham’s job turned into a lucrative career, and soon he became so successful he owned a mortgage company that has since its inception remained at the top of the industry. Perhaps more signi cant is that his business has been 100 percent referral-based for a decade. He estimates that each day one-quarter of the calls his office receives have nothing to do with obtaining a mortgage—something he’s very proud of. ey are people calling with questions like “Where should I get my car repaired?” “Where should I take my in-laws to dinner?” and “Whom should I call for life insurance?” He explains that these people call him because he’s become known as the go-to guy in a large local network of friends. “I didn’t get that way by holding free mortgage seminars or erecting a large billboard featuring my con dent, trustworthy face,” quips Beecham. “I got that way by helping people without hustling them for business. It is why oreau wrote, ‘Goodness is the only investment that never fails.’” 9 e same spirit of relating is within reach of every one of us in every interaction. How simple it is to set out motivated only to get to know others and nd a problem you can help solve or a pursuit you can help promote. is

is the simple secret to what Beecham calls bass-ackward business. Yet the truth is that the typical ways most conduct themselves in business relationships is what’s backward. “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine”—this isn’t reciprocity, it’s bartering, an entirely different trajectory that removes the magic. And it’s unadulterated magic that makes interactions so memorable. It’s what draws us in. ere is trust and a genuine sense of belonging and meaning. Today there is simply no excuse not to take an interest in others’ interests. Even if you are not actively involved in clubs, groups, or local organizations where face-to-face interactions are possible, there is still an abundance of opportunities to learn about others’ passions and concerns. What could happen if you spent ve minutes every day reading through the Facebook page of three friends, the professional biographies of three clients, or the personal blogs of three employees you haven’t taken the time to know well? For starters, you’d certainly learn something about them you didn’t know before. It’s also likely you would come to appreciate them more. Perhaps you have similar interests; this is fodder for future conversation, even for future collaboration. Perhaps one is going through a difficult time; this is an opportunity to engage them with encouragement and a greater level of empathy. Perhaps you have a mutual friend; wouldn’t this make your relationship much easier, as trust is already established in a common friend and time is already invested in common experiences? One can never underestimate the importance of affinity. “We tend to dislike what we don’t know,” blogged Amy Martin, founder of social media powerhouse Digital Royalty and one of Forbes magazine’s “20 Best-Branded Women on Twitter,” after her rst experience with NASCAR. 10 “Many people don’t understand, or better yet ‘get’ . . . the so-called monotonous day of left turns and mullets.” She was admittedly in that camp before attending the 2011 Daytona 500. Shortly thereafter she wrote a blog post singing NASCAR’s praises for achieving a level of genuine connection and in uence with its fan base that is rare in professional sports. “Here’s what I learned,” she writes. “Drivers do fan Q&As and autograph sessions the day of the race. e Daytona 500 happens to be the biggest day of the year for NASCAR. I don’t think Brett Favre was chatting it up with thousands of fans the day of the Super Bowl. I received a magical ‘hot pass’ and

could go anywhere. It was uncomfortably exciting having unlimited access and at times I worried about getting in the crew’s way. I was a part of the action and wasn’t the only one. Bottom line, fans have access.” As for why Martin believes NASCAR’s approach is a smart move for any sport, she cites the following reasons: • Access leads to connection. (Fans are able to sign the actual racetrack.) • Connection leads to relationships. (At all ages.) • Relationships lead to affinity. (You can’t fake this affinity.) • Affinity leads to in uence. (ere’s a reason so many brands are attracted to NASCAR.) • In uence leads to conversion. (ese fans would likely buy anything this driver is selling.) Martin ends her post with a nod to the potential reach of NASCAR’s genuine connectivity with its fan base—150,000 fans in the stands and 30 million television viewers—were they to embrace the opportunities the digital age affords them. “ere is huge potential,” she writes, “when you apply this same access via social media to a larger audience. What if the same behind-thescenes access available to fans physically at the Daytona 500 was available to those billions of potential fans [on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube] who are not watching the race on TV?” 11 Martin’s post bridges the two key points of taking interest in others’ interests today: 1. Human relations are always easier when they begin from a place of affinity. 2. e potential for relational connectivity is astronomical. e bottom line is that you must become genuinely interested in others before you can ever expect anyone to be interested in you. “All things being equal,” said author John Maxwell in a recent interview, “people do business with people they like. All things not being equal, they still do.” We like people

who like us. So to be liked, you must exhibit admiration for the things others do and say. Many have argued that people no longer have much interest in others. e “me” focus dominates how we think, act, and communicate. Yet you have so many opportunities to stay connected, to learn more, to show your interest. Changing how you spend just a small portion of each day can dramatically change how others perceive your level of interest in them. Changing your customer engagement strategy can dramatically change how the marketplace perceives your company. Instead of spending each day re ning your digital media, spend time relating to your friends, colleagues, and clients. Post brief, admiring notes. Interact with them and discover what problems you might help solve or what pursuits you might help promote; we are all driven by pain and pleasure, so such prospects exist in every person. When you are sincere in your endeavors to connect with others, chances are always higher that meaningful connection will occur. Progressive, mutually bene cial collaboration is then possible. And today, genuine connection and collaboration can quickly become infectious.

2 Smile Getting people to agree about virtually anything is practically impossible. Take Neil Armstrong’s 1969 romp across the moon. In the United Kingdom only 75 percent of people believe it actually happened. 1 Only 94 percent of Americans believe it happened. 2 In countries such as Mexico, China, and Indonesia, fewer than a third of respondents believe al Qaeda had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C. In the United States 16 percent of people believe it was planted explosives rather than burning passenger jets that brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center. 3 About half of citizens in the European Union believe in God. 4 ere is one thing that does unite us, however. According to the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry, 99.7 percent of adults believe a smile is an important social asset. 5 It’s a difficult statistic to refute, even if you aren’t in the business of perfecting smiles. We gravitate to grins and giggles. Consider the all-time most viewed videos on YouTube. e top two are all about smiles. In the most viewed, from the United Kingdom, Harry, a three-year-old boy, and his one-year-old brother, Charlie, are playing for the camera when Charlie grabs one of Harry’s ngers and shoves it in his mouth. A moment later he chomps down and Harry yelps in displeasure, retrieving his nger. All the while, Charlie smiles. at smile eventually wins as Harry’s smile returns and giggles ensue. 6 e other video is from Sweden. In it a baby boy smiles, giggles, and laughs in response to his parents’ silly sounds. It is nearly two minutes of face-cramp-inducing smiles. 7 A combined half a billion views tell us all we need to know. Smiles send a message we like to receive. Smiling is innate, says Daniel McNeill, author of e Face: A Natural History. Some sort of smile, he writes, rst appears two to twelve hours after birth. No one knows whether these smiles have any content—McNeill suspects they do not—but studies show they are crucial to bonding. What no one can debate, however, is the power of a smile no matter its origin.

McNeill notes that while “courtroom judges are equally likely to nd smilers and nonsmilers guilty, they give smilers lighter penalties, a phenomenon called the ‘smile-leniency effect.’” 8 Smiles also have a proliferation effect. Nicholas Christakis, a physician and sociologist at Harvard, and James Fowler, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, with special expertise in social networks, published a paper in the British Medical Journal in 2008, entitled “Dynamic Spread of Happiness in a Large Social Network.” ey knew emotions could spread over short periods of time from person to person, in a process known as “emotional contagion.” But what they wanted to know was just how widely and sustainably happiness spread in social networks. ey followed 4,739 people from 1983 to 2003. ese individuals were embedded in a larger network of 12,067 people, each having an average of eleven connections to others (including friends, family, coworkers, and neighbors), and their happiness was assessed every few years using a standard measure. e researchers’ ndings con rmed the impact of a happy person, which smiling conveys directly. Social networks, they concluded, have clusters of happy and unhappy people within them that reach out to three degrees of separation. A person’s happiness is related to the happiness of their friends, their friends’ friends, and their friends’ friends’ friends—that is, to people well beyond their social horizon. We found that happy people tend to be located in the center of their social networks and to be located in large clusters of other happy people. And we found that each additional happy friend increases a person’s probability of being happy by about 9%. For comparison, having an extra $5,000 in income (in 1984 dollars) increased the probability of being happy by about 2%. Happiness, in short, is not merely a function of personal experience, but also is a property of groups. 9 But what of life since 2003? Do our more prominent and ever-present digital walls lter out emotions rather than encourage them? Can happiness

still spread in a world of bits and bytes? e answer, they found, is yes—if we can see that people are smiling. Christakis and Fowler followed up their rst study by looking at a group of 1,700 college students interconnected by Facebook. ey reviewed their online pro les, determined their closest friends, and this time studied everyone’s photographs, noting those who were smiling in the photos and those who were not. ey then mapped the pictures based on who was smiling and who was not. Each student was represented by a node and each line between two nodes indicated that the connected individuals were tagged in a photo together. Students who are smiling (and surrounded by smiling people in their network) were colored yellow. Students who were frowning (and surrounded by the same countenance) were colored blue. And nally, green nodes indicated a mix of smiling and non-smiling friends. e map showed in vivid fashion how strongly the yellow nodes (smilers) and blue nodes (frowners) clustered together, with the yellow clusters proving to be much larger and more populated than the blues. Additionally, the nonsmilers seemed to be “located more peripherally in the network,” primarily on the outskirts of the map. is came as no surprise to Christakis and Fowler, who noted, Statistical analysis of the network shows that people who smile tend to have more friends (smiling gets you an average of one extra friend, which is pretty good considering that people only have about six close friends). Not only that, but the statistical analyses con rm that those who smile are measurably more central to the network compared to those who do not smile. at is, if you smile, you are less likely to be on the periphery of the online world. In their nal thoughts after noting the large and frequent number of node clusters surrounding smiling people, and the remote and peripherally peppered nodes of frowning people, they wrote, “It thus seems to be the case, online as well as offline, that when you smile, the world smiles with you.” 10

ere is a simple reason for this phenomenon: when we smile, we are letting people know we are happy to be with them, happy to meet them, happy to be interacting with them. ey in turn feel happier to be dealing with us. To someone who has seen a dozen people frown, scowl, or turn their faces away, your smile is like the sun breaking through the clouds. Your smile is often the rst messenger of your goodwill. Of course we don’t always feel like smiling, but if we make the effort, we not only make those around us happier but also become happier ourselves. You may not be a particularly exuberant, outgoing person, but a simple smile takes little effort—and the rewards can be astonishing. For the past decade, as email and texting have supplanted oral communication, we’ve been seduced by the fallacious notion that we live in an emotional desert. Entrepreneurs, business owners, and many professionals can carry on business with only a minimum of tactile interaction. Many modern two-dimensional media allow all of us at one time or another to forget about the importance of a smile. In many ways texts and emails of today are like the telegraph messages of old, which had their own share of troubles. A reporter once telegraphed actor Cary Grant about his age. “HOW OLD CARY GRANT?” the message read. e actor replied, “OLD CARY GRANT FINE. HOW YOU?” Clearly the human proclivity toward misunderstanding is high. row in technology and it becomes all the more inevitable. Where telegrams were once ubiquitous, today’s technology can be suffocating. In 1929, at the telegram’s peak, 200 million of them were sent. By April 2010 nearly 300 billion email messages were sent every day. 11 Pile on a daily worldwide barrage of text messages, instant messages, and Facebook wall posts, and it is a small wonder the world hasn’t descended into anarchy. ank goodness for smiles, which can do a better job of clarifying our messages than anything—even if they take the form of traditional emoticons, little faces composed of ordinary keyboard characters designed to give muchneeded context for our communications. Recognizing the limitations of these symbols, the three largest Japanese cell phone companies—NTT DoCoMo, au, and Soft-Bank Mobile—created emojis, color pictures displaying a broad range of emotions and symbols to

better emulate the face-to-face experience. Google has now adopted them for its email platform, and they are being rapidly integrated into iPhones. Yet while these clever little symbols are endearing, they are unlikely to appear within your next digital message to a board member, a problem employee, or a prospective client. Emoticons are largely for use in casual conversations, and in such contexts they serve well. How, then, do we smile across all media and, when necessary, maintain a certain level of professionalism in the process? ere is little doubt that letting another see your smile is most effective, but because so many of our interactions today are not face-to-face, you must turn your resources toward overcoming the obstacles to exhibiting friendliness across digital space. It may be simpler than you think. Outside of emoticons and emojis, there is only one medium in which you can convey a digital smile—your voice, whether it is written or spoken. How you write an email, the tone you use, and the words you choose are critical tools of friendliness and subsequent in uence. Your written words are like the corners of your mouth: they turn up, they remain straight, or they turn down. e subsequent effect—whether the words garner friendships and in uence— has much to do with the linear trajectory of the emotion they convey. Smile through your written words and you convey to others that their wellbeing is important to you. You and your message will have the best chance of being received. Frown through your words and others will often frown on the message and messenger. ese conclusions certainly do not account for those occasions when a more serious tone ought to be taken. Still, a good rule of thumb here is to make sure the linear thread of the message trends upward. Always begin and end the message on a positive note rather than on a pessimistic or detached one. Between two people there is nearly always a reason to smile. If you can’t see a reason, then perhaps you need to wait before you write or not write at all. As many relationships have been damaged by insensitive, knee-jerk notes as by verbal insults or tirades. e reason is simple: Written words and their effect are permanent and largely irrefutable. While you might argue against your email’s negative or tactless tone, the echoing effect it has on its recipient is nearly impossible to

silence. And today that effect can multiply quickly, damaging relations between employees, departments, and even entire value chains. According to a recent issue of Fast Company, “New research is adding a Twittery avor to the old adage ‘birds of a feather ock together,’ because it suggests happy twitterers tend to aggregate.” e article goes on to explain, “Above many other factors that cause people to aggregate together, people who are sad or happy tend to communicate on Twitter with other people who are sad, or happy.” e research team, including University of Indiana professor Johan Bollen, analyzed the tweet streams from 102,000 Twitter users over six months, examining 129 million tweets. e analysis used standard algorithms borrowed from psychological research to assess the “subjective well-being” of users from their tweets by looking for trends in positive or negative words. en they looked at aggregation trends, and found that happier people are more usually found re-tweeting and messaging other Twitter users who are also happy. e same is true for unhappy people. From the ndings, Bollen suggests a tweet is more infectious than we realize, “and very effectively communicates joy or sadness. People who are happy would then tend to prefer (on average) happier fellow tweeters because they echo their own emotions.” 12 e fact remains—if you can’t convey the proper amount of positive emotion in a written note, you are better off leaving the page blank, or perhaps even inserting an emoji (to the detriment of your professional reputation). ere are worse things, in other words, than being thought a bit unprofessional. Avoiding negative sentiment with your written words altogether is obviously the goal. It is largely possible. Perhaps it is time to rethink the value of those writing skills your teachers insisted would be necessary one day. ey were right, after all. e other way in which you convey your digital voice, your spoken words, has heavy implications as well. How you speak, the tone in your voice, and the

words you choose often express more than the words themselves. You have no doubt heard the retort: “Your actions speak so loudly I can hardly hear a word you are saying.” It is just as true to assert: “Your tone speaks so loudly I can hardly hear a word you are saying.” Asserting you are glad to meet someone on a phone call means little if said with minimal facial movement and no positive in ection. It simply comes across that you are bored or busy with something more important, or worse, the complete opposite message—that meeting the person is an unpleasant proposition. Avoiding such situations begins in the same way it would begin if you were standing in front of the person. Numerous studies have shown that the physical act of smiling, even while on a phone call, actually improves the tone in which your words are conveyed. It is no coincidence that one of the central tenets that all speaking, singing, and broadcasting coaches drill into their students is that your voice sounds more pleasant, more inviting, and more compelling when you are smiling. A smile, in other words, translates across wires whether or not the person on the receiving end can see your face. When seeking in uence that leads to positive change, there is no sidestepping the door of healthy human relations. A smile opens this door whether it’s visible, written, or verbal. Rosalind Picard is a professor at the MIT Media Lab and internationally known for her book Affective Computing, about giving technology emotional qualities that help people communicate more effectively. e advances she highlights are nothing short of staggering—machines with “faces” that can respond appropriately to reprimands or praise, encouragement or rebuke. 13 Of course, these machines are merely responding to preprogrammed commands, much as a computer screen responds when a key is pushed. ese machines mimic physical cues, words, and verbal tone, yet they do not feel. It is worth noting that humans can program such technology. is fact alone provides compelling evidence of how well we know pat responses to others’ cues, words, and tone. We are wired in the same way we wire our technologies, only with feeling to boot. “ere are two kinds of people,” blogged media maven Chris Brogan,

those who see the computer/internet/buttons as being attached to human, feeling beings, and those who think it’s just online and that it doesn’t attach. at’s like saying the phone is just something to talk into and there’s no emotions there, either. It’s not just online. People do have feelings that they associate to these “at a distance” places. Yes, people overreact. We agree there. But to dismiss emotions simply because of the medium would be to dismiss letters, telephones, pictures, etc. Lots of things happen at a distance and yet convey consequences. I think there are most de nitely two sets of minds at work, and that by realizing the above, it describes/de nes a lot of those times when one side or the other feels misunderstood. Just remembering this one detail, and realizing which of the two people you’re dealing with [and which one others perceive you to be], and things might get better. 14 Emotions, it seems, are the boundless gifts (and burdens) that humans carry. is can either discourage or encourage. Your mouth has a lot to say about your choice. A smile, someone once said, costs nothing but gives much. It enriches those who receive without making poorer those who give. It takes but a moment, but the memory of it sometimes lasts forever. None is so rich or mighty that he cannot get along without it and none is so poor that he cannot be made rich by it. Yet a smile cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen, for it is something that is of no value to anyone until it is given away. Some people are too tired to give you a smile. Give them one of yours, as none needs a smile so much as he who has no more to give. 15 Smile. It increases your face value.

3 Reign with Names On March 10, 2010, a press release skittered through the wires at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges, one of American Lawyer’s top 100 law rms. John Quinn and Eric Emanuel, who founded the company twenty- ve years earlier, were naming a new partner—Kathleen M. Sullivan. Sullivan, one of the nation’s top litigators and former dean of Stanford Law School, had been credentialed at Cornell, Harvard Law, and Oxford. She’d been First Lady Michelle Obama’s professor at Harvard, and praise for her legal mind, acumen, and talent was universal. Her adversaries knew how tough a legal foe she was. Her appointment was well deserved. Law rms, like all companies, make changes to their businesses from time to time. Associates come and go, paralegals and assistants as well. Partner turnover is much rarer, but it is hardly uncommon. Why was this particular appointment so signi cant? Kathleen Sullivan was not just named a partner; she became a named partner. e new rm would henceforth be called Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. To be a named partner in a law rm is especially signi cant, all the more at a prestigious rm. But what put Sullivan’s appointment into rare air was that she immediately became the rst woman ever to be a named partner at one of America’s top 100 law rms. From 1870, when Ada H. Kepley became the rst woman to graduate from a law school, to 2010, no other top rm had made space on its door for a woman’s name. But no more. A name was embraced and a barrier broken. Quinn wrote, “Her inclusion in the rm’s name re ects the integration of our trial and appellate practices and our strengths as a national law rm.” ere is power in a person’s name. More than a word, it is a verbal symbol of something much deeper and more meaningful. is is not just the case for groundbreakers such as Kathleen Sullivan. From ancient to modern literature, a person’s name was not merely a moniker; it was a revelation of character, personality, and fate. Apollo,

Abraham, and Atticus; Cosette, Scarlett, Cinderella, and Pollyanna. In Roman times, a name was so closely identi ed with who a person was that when a criminal’s name was removed from the civic register, all the rights of citizenship vanished. To this day certain tribes in Africa believe an individual’s given name is the primary force that determines his or her skills, decisions, and ultimately life’s destiny. Is there any reason to believe a person’s name is any less important today? It is perhaps more so, but it has become primarily the case in a commercial context. is represents opportunities and problems. In the digital age, names are like company logos, identifying not only who one is but also what one represents—likes and dislikes, yeas and nays. e hundreds of millions of bloggers, tweeters, and Facebookers surely want their voices heard, but they also want their names known. Twitter and Facebook in particular have done more than simply add to an information-based economy; they have also created a new kind of name-based economy in which we are largely known by the name we brand and campaign to the world. is sort of recognition can now be monetized, of course, giving new meaning to the phrase “household name.” On Twitter and blogs, your commercial worth is commensurate with the number of names following you. As your following grows, publishing contracts, advertising agreements, and endorsement deals increase not only in viability but also in value. Technorati Top 100 blogger Ree Drummond is a great example. A University of California, Los Angeles, graduate with big plans to practice law in a big city, she met and married her “Marlboro Man” husband while on a “pit stop” in Oklahoma, as she put it. Plans for law school in Chicago went out the window, and she moved to her husband’s fourth-generation cattle ranch and took on her new moniker, “Pioneer Woman.” 1 Drummond began blogging in 2006 as a way to keep friends and family apprised of her unexpected but gratifying life. By 2009 she had approximately two million readers and site traffic in the eight- gure range monthly. By 2010 she had two lucrative book contracts and two subsequent New York Times bestsellers, and she was earning approximately $1 million a year from blog ad sales alone. 2

It is clear that our own names can hold value today, but lest we be tempted to forget, knowing others’ names can lead to greater success. Dave Munson, founder of the Saddleback Leather Company, knows this well. He was a volunteer English teacher in Mexico when he had his rst leather bag made from a design he drew for a local leatherworker. e bag garnered so much attention on his hometown streets of Portland, Oregon, he decided to return to Mexico immediately and have more made. A month later Munson returned to Portland with eight bags in tow and sold them all from the safari rack of his old Land Cruiser in three hours. e Saddleback Leather Company was born, and with it the goal “to love people around the world by making excessively high quality, tough and functional leather designs.” 3 His secret? Munson frequently elds customer calls from his cell phone and returns online questions via phone or email; he also travels to Mexico multiple times each year to stay connected with the Mexican leatherworkers still making his bags. e visits aren’t showmanship. “I hug the workers and ask them how I can pray for them,” he explained in a recent interview. “When I rst started taking the trips I remember how shocked these men were that I would call them by name and then sit down and talk to them about their personal lives. One got tears in his eyes. en so did I.” 4 He doesn’t share these personal stories on his blog or in his marketing literature because he believes promising to do something is different from simply producing it. Saddleback is proud, he says, to remain a family business despite selling millions of dollars’ worth of leather goods each year. “I’ve heard horror stories of lots of small and successful businesses who, driven by greed, try to become giants and fail,” Munson writes on his blog. “We aren’t like that. We are and will maintain our family of leather owners with love. Pretty much everyday I lay down in bed with my hot wife and we talk about different bag owners who we’ve been going back and forth with. We want to know your name.” 5 It is this level of personal touch—putting people’s names before product names and pro ts—that makes one surmise Saddleback Leather will be around as long as one of his leather bags, which carries the tagline “ey’ll ght over it when you’re dead.”

e opportunities to be known by others and to know others are ultimately two sides of the same coin. ere is branding—the introduction of you to others. And then there is relationship building—the interaction between you and others. What is interesting is that you can forgo the former and still be successful. You can be so good at building relationships that your interactions with others birth and sustain your brand. Conversely, you cannot sustain success on branding alone. You cannot brand yourself or your business and then forgo building relationships. In the end, business is still about one person relating to another. Mr. Bates from Watkinsville, Georgia, experienced this rsthand. He is a business owner who always takes his top out-of-town suppliers to Bone’s, a famous Atlanta restaurant some seventy miles away. His loyalty, however, wasn’t born of their exquisite menu, branded as well as any in North America. It started with a waiter named James. As Mr. Bates and a supplier pulled up to their table one evening, James approached promptly. “Hello, Mr. Bates,” he said. “ank you for choosing Bone’s. It is a pleasure to have you back.” To hear Mr. Bates describe it, it was no insigni cant moment. “It changed the dining experience and imprinted that restaurant in my mind. I’d only dined there once before—six months earlier—and James not only knew my name, he took the time to discover I’d been there before. I was by no means a regular, but the small gesture made me feel like one. It was the old adage about ‘treating someone like the person you want him to become’ coming true.” For such a small gesture it paid big dividends. “I don’t take my suppliers anywhere else now,” said Mr. Bates. Judging by the popularity of Bone’s, it would seem many customers share his sentiment. is is the primary business payoff of remembering people’s names: they remember you. e ipside is an unenviable place to be. One of the rst lessons a politician learns is this: “To recall a voter’s name is statesmanship. To forget is oblivion.” It is one trait that unites most of history’s great leaders. From Lincoln to Churchill to Bonaparte, these men gured out ways to remember people’s names with surprising consistency. In so doing, they recalled, knowingly or not, a famous Emerson saying: “Good manners are made up of petty sacri ces.” 6

When it comes to remembering names, some sacri ces may be required. Napoleon III, emperor of France and nephew of the great Napoleon Bonaparte, claimed he could remember the name of every person he met despite all of his royal duties. How? If he didn’t hear the name distinctly, he said, “So sorry. I didn’t get the name clearly.” en, if it was an unusual name, he would say, “How is it spelled?” During the conversation, he took the trouble to repeat the name several times and tried to associate it in his mind with the person’s features, expression, and general appearance. If the person was of special importance to him, he later wrote the name down on a piece of paper, looked at it, concentrated on it, xed it securely in his mind, and then tore up the paper. In this way, he gained a visual impression of the name as well as an audible impression.7 Our challenges today are far greater than Napoleon’s. Numerous studies show that the only thing worse than television for our attention span is the Internet. A blur of 140-word tweets, Facebook news feeds, emails, instant messages, and web pages are beginning to rewire our brains. In a May 2010 issue of Wired, author Nicholas Carr revealed that a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, had discovered that just ve hours on the Internet rerouted people’s neural pathways. Carr noted: Dozens of studies by psychologists, neurobiologists, and educators point to the same conclusion: When we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and super cial learning. Even as the Internet grants us easy access to vast amounts of information, it is turning us into shallower thinkers, literally changing the structure of our brain.8 In 2010 famed lm critic Roger Ebert blogged, “ere’s such a skitterish impatience in our society right now.” 9 He’s right. But such reality doesn’t give us an excuse for forgetting people’s names. Instead, it provides us with a challenge. As more and more people nd it more and more difficult to remember names, there is enormous advantage to be gained by those who do.

How? ere are some easy ways. Instead of defaulting to hollow, truncated greetings such as “Hey” or “Hi,” default to a greeting that uses the person’s name: “Dear Robin” or “Good morning, Robert.” When you do, practice Napoleon’s technique and visualize the person’s face. If you’ve taken the advice of earlier chapters and sought to take interest in the person’s interests, impress your mind with those as well. “Robert is married with three daughters and he likes reading Ernest Hemingway.” It’s a simple exercise that will not only help you greet Robert by name the next time you interact; it will also go a long way to helping you consistently view him outside a mere transactional context. A quick tip here: Before you use people’s names, make sure you know them in the right context. Today most people have more than one name to which they answer. Celebrated entrepreneur Richard Branson is “Richard” to many friends, but he is also “Mr. Branson” to many acquaintances and “Sir Richard” to many fellow Brits. While we are a far less formal society at large, using a person’s name out of context is a good way to get a relationship off on the wrong foot. Susan or Suzie? Ben or Benjamin? Jacqueline or Jackie? e best advice is to avoid guessing. Don’t call Richard “Richie,” “Rich” or “Dick” in an email unless he’s been introduced as such, he’s asked you to use that name, or he’s referred to himself with that name in a voice mail, text message, or email to you. If you’ve not been introduced and have never corresponded, do a little homework on what people in your same relational position are calling him. Don’t check to see what his Facebook or Twitter friends call him—at this point you’re not yet his friend and have not earned the right to call him a more casual name. Instead, review how he refers to himself on his website or blog. If there is an article written about him or in which he is referenced, use that name. We must remember that a person is more interested in his or her own name than in all the other names on earth put together. Remember that name and use it easily, and you have paid a subtle and very effective compliment. But forget it or misspell it, and you have placed yourself at a sharp disadvantage. While many choose the safer alternative and address a person with terms such as “man,” “ma’am,” and “sir,” you can place yourself in the same person’s better graces by taking the time to not only remember but also use his or her

name. Many of the salutation pitfalls we fear are easily avoidable with a few minutes’ worth of research. Aren’t a few minutes of your time worth it if it means standing out from the crowd, if it means making a better impression than most people make on others? If you want others to remember and use your name, the small investment is necessary. People have names coming at them in all forms all day long— people’s names, company names, brand names, street names, and store names. What will set yours apart? Largely, the emotions people associate with your name. If you’re just another waiter in just another restaurant in Atlanta—a metropolitan area of more than ve million people—you will be no more memorable than the numbers on your license plate or the color of your shirt. Your name will do little to trigger emotions that connect others to you. It is no coincidence that Mr. Bates easily remembered James’s name after only one encounter. He estimates he dines out about twelve times a month. When asked if he remembers other waiters’ names, he replied, “I barely remember my own some days.” We should always be aware of the magic contained in a person’s name and realize that this word is wholly and completely owned by the person with whom we are dealing, and nobody else. It is a person’s trademark. After the gift of life, a person’s name is the rst gift he or she received. When this word is used in conversation, the information we are discussing or the connection we are seeking takes on greater meaning. Perhaps a doctor’s office provides the best evidence. ere is an ongoing debate in the medical world about how and when rst names should be used. Does a rst-name basis overpersonalize interactions that are best kept in a professional realm? Or would a rst-name basis help in the process of health and healing and particularly in the process of discussing very difficult prognoses? It would seem that most doctors believe professionalism is important and rst names are best kept at bay. Yet doctors’ offices are typically places where patients feel dehumanized. ey are folders and cases, not faces and feelings. eir names are frequently mispronounced or mistaken altogether, only serving to highlight a potentially dangerous disconnection.

One high-pro le doctor decided to buck the trend. 10 Dr. Howard Fine is the head of the neuro-oncology program at the National Institutes of Health. In that capacity he performs original research, oversees and distributes all of NIH’s funding, and is the hands-on doctor for as many brain cancer patients as want to see him—free of charge, since it is a government program. When patients arrive to see him for the rst time, they are largely hopeless. ey’ve seen the statistics on the Internet. ey’ve heard horror stories. Dr. Fine views part of his job as restoring hope—responsible hope. How he handles names plays a leading role in this process. He estimates he’s seen more than twenty thousand patients over the years, and one of the ways he has chosen to interact is by introducing himself as “Howard Fine,” without the doctor designation. From there his patients are encouraged to call him by his rst name. It takes the relationship to another level, whereby he is no longer a detached doctor trying to keep them from dying; he is a highly educated friend, wise con dant, and erce advocate who will ght for their full recovery. He is not in the business of blowing smoke. Instead, he understands that because the sharing of facts is both important and poignant for his patients, the establishment of rapport is essential for their well-being. What brain tumor patients need more than a doctor is a trusted advisor who understands. is is achieved more naturally when the doctor puts himself on the same level of his patients, a fellow human with a strong desire to live. It would be easy for a prominent physician to nd power in the “Dr.” moniker. But a big part of what makes Fine’s program the crown jewel of the National Institutes of Health, according to one of the institute’s heads, is that he recognizes that rst names are more powerful and purposeful than detached ranks or bestowed titles. It is why Carnegie insisted names are “the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”

4 Listen Longer How do you get the job, land the client, increase your in uence, and not lose $180 million in market capitalization? Listen. In March 2008 the members of a little-known indie band from Canada were on their way to Nebraska to for a weeklong tour. e rst leg of their United Airlines ight landed in Chicago. As the guys began to deplane, they heard a woman behind them exclaim, “ey’re throwing guitars out there!” ey pressed their noses up against the windows to see for themselves. e woman was right; their guitars were being tossed and dropped and tossed again onto the luggage cart. One of those guitars, a $3,500 Taylor, belonged to the band’s lead singer, Dave Carroll, who immediately tried telling a ight attendant what was happening. On his website he explains she cut him off. “Don’t talk to me,” she said. “Talk to the lead agent outside.” He went outside, where another employee never took the time to listen to his complaint. A third employee dismissed him saying, “But hun, that’s why we make you sign the waiver.” He explained that he hadn’t signed a waiver and that no waiver would excuse what many people on the plane had seen. She told him to wait until Omaha to talk to someone. 1 Not surprisingly, when he opened his guitar case he discovered it had been badly damaged. us began a yearlong odyssey in which Dave Carroll tried to get someone at United Airlines to listen. During those twelve months, every United employee Carroll spoke with told him what to do, but none bothered to listen to him. At one point they told him to bring the guitar to Chicago for inspection. He had long since returned to his home in Canada, some fteen hundred miles away. In the meantime, Carroll had the guitar xed for $1,200. He was a professional musician and needed the primary tool of the trade. But the sound wasn’t the same.

He told United he would settle with them for the repair bill. His request fell on deaf ears. But a traveling songwriter always has two things: something to say and a means to say it. If United wouldn’t listen, perhaps his music audience would. 2 Carroll sat down and wrote a song called “United Breaks Guitars,” and on July 6, 2009, he uploaded a video of it to YouTube. He hoped for a million views in the rst year. People listened far more than he anticipated: two weeks after it premiered, the video had nearly four million views. Within days, e Times of London revealed, “the gathering thunderclouds of bad PR caused United Airlines’ stock price to suffer a mid- ight stall, and it plunged by 10%, costing shareholders $180 million. Which, incidentally, would have bought Carroll more than 51,000 replacement guitars.” 3 e power of listening is the power to change hearts and minds. More consequentially, it is the power of giving people what they most desire—to be heard and understood. Seesmic founder Loïc Le Meur maintains that the very idea of online ad campaigns is passé. e key for any and every company is a “long-term engagement program” that facilitates listening to customers. 4 Online ad campaigns have so much promise, though. ey can deliver a demographic pro le unlike any other medium. Your company wants a twentythree-year-old female computer programmer who likes basket weaving? ere’s almost certainly a site where she can be found. Such pro ling has long been the dream of advertisers everywhere. How could this not work? It doesn’t work, Le Meur says, because generating impressions or exposure simply isn’t how the world works. 5 Rather, it works through listening and building up trust. is process is a slow one, but one that will always bear fruit. During the darkest hours of the Civil War, Lincoln wrote to an old friend in Spring eld, Illinois, asking him to come to Washington. Lincoln said he had some problems he wanted to discuss with him. e old neighbor got to Washington as quickly as he could. Lincoln talked to him for hours about the advisability of issuing a proclamation freeing the slaves. He went over all the arguments for and against such a move, and then read letters and newspaper articles, some denouncing him for not freeing the slaves and others

denouncing him for fear he was going to free them. After the long conversation, Lincoln shook hands with his old friend, said goodnight, and sent him back to Illinois without ever asking for his opinion. Lincoln had done all of the talking. But the talking seemed to clarify his mind. “He seemed to feel easier after that talk,” the old friend said. Lincoln hadn’t wanted advice. He had wanted a sympathetic, trusted listener to whom he could unburden himself. Ultimately it is what we all seek at one time or another. e question is whether you are discerning enough to be a burden lifter. When President Coolidge became vice president, Channing H. Cox succeeded him as governor of Massachusetts and came to Washington to call on his predecessor. Cox was impressed by the fact that Coolidge was able to see a long list of callers every day and yet nish his work at 5:00 p.m., while Cox found that he was often detained at his desk up to nine o’clock. “How come the difference?” he asked Coolidge. “You talk back,” said Coolidge. 6 Listening’s power, like that of smiling, is strong. When you listen well you not only make an instant impression, you also build a solid bridge for lasting connection. Who can resist being around a person who suspends his thoughts in order to value yours? Few people in modern times have listened as well as Sigmund Freud. A man who once met him described his manner of listening: It struck me so forcibly that I shall never forget him. He had qualities, which I had never seen in any other man. Never had I seen such concentrated attention. ere was none of that piercing “soul penetrating gaze” business. His eyes were mild and genial. His voice was low and kind. His gestures were few. But the attention he gave me, his appreciation of what I said, even when I said it badly, was extraordinary. You’ve no idea what it meant to be listened to like that. 7 One might argue that people such as Freud, Lincoln, and others in an age gone by had it easier. eir world was smaller and certainly more controlled.

ere is some truth to this argument, but not anything that provides us an excuse. Yes, our age is broader and far more untamed, but we made it so. And it is therefore we who can make such traits work in our favor. Unfortunately, it seems many haven’t yet gured it out. While our circle of in uence balloons well beyond our neighbors and work colleagues to encompass, primarily through Facebook, much of our relational history, such an expansive network that numbers in the hundreds if not the thousands seems to be overwhelming to most. While the number of people to whom we might listen has expanded, the number of people to whom we actually listen is diminishing. A recent study pro led in the American Sociological Review reveals that people are growing more socially isolated than they were even twenty years ago: Overall, the number of people Americans have in their closest circle of con dants has dropped from around three to about two. . . . Whereas nearly three-quarters of people in 1985 reported they had a friend in whom they could con de, only half in 2004 said they could count on such support. e number of people who said they counted a neighbor as a con dant dropped by more than half, from about 19 percent to about 8 percent. 8 “We’re not saying people are completely isolated,” notes Lynn Smith-Lovin, a Duke University sociologist who helped conduct the study. “ey may have 600 friends on Facebook . . . and e-mail 25 people a day, but they are not discussing matters that are personally important.” 9 More so than when this book was rst published in 1936, there is a crying need for people who will make the time to listen, for people who will resist the “skitterish impatience” so prevalent in our age and make people more important than progress. It is of course absurd to believe progress can be made without the delity of other people, but we usually don’t see this until other

people let us know—with their eyes, with their silence, with their closed wallets. ere are few new tips that can create a personal or corporate cache of better listening. But there is one principle that, if applied daily, can reconnect you with others on a lasting level: presence. A martyred spiritual ambassador once framed the principle this way: “Wherever you are, be all there.” 10 John, an aspiring political writer, understood this principle far earlier in life than his peers. His claim is that he’s never given a bad job interview. For every interview, he’s received an offer. But what is perhaps most interesting is that there has rarely been anything on paper to suggest he was the best t. “I have, more often than not,” he admits, “been an average prospect on paper.” To what, then, does he attribute his uncommon interview success rate? A counterintuitive perspective on interviews. He explains: Every interview is a chance to learn something new about people I’ve never met. ink about it; the environment is conducive to it. ere’s already a natural give-and-take. In my interviews I’ve learned about everything from culinary tastes to dashed dreams to crazy hopes. People want to be listened to and they want people around who will listen. So I listen. And I’ve found that listening imparts a great deal of respect—more so than any planned speech ever could. 11 So it turns out that listening also garners great respect. And John’s rare interview presence has translated into rare opportunities—he has served as both a CIA agent and a White House speechwriter. When asked for suggestions on embodying his level of presence with others, he says his personal goal is to ask fteen questions per day. e most important ve, he explains, are to your family or those in closest proximity to you. Sure, ask about their day. But go deeper. Ask what made them laugh. Or perhaps what made them cry. Ask them about a lesson they learned or a person they met whom they liked.

e next ve are for the people with whom you work on a regular basis. “e old truth that there are no bad questions may or may not be true in a brainstorming session. It is certainly true when done with sincerity in a conversation with another person. If you ask with respect and interest, you cannot go wrong.” Finally, he explains, the last ve questions are for your digital space— Facebook, emails, Twitter, and blogs. “Read others’ posts and messages closely; comment or reply with questions, and do it for at least ve different people every day. In addition to that, use your posts and updates to ask more questions of your friends and followers. You may be surprised at how many people respond.” ese are lessons Bob Taylor of Taylor Guitars certainly takes to heart. When he heard that Dave Carroll’s Taylor guitar had been damaged by United Airlines, he called Carroll directly and offered him two guitars of his choice. Imagine what might have happened if someone, anyone, at United exercised an ear for how to make things right with David Carroll. If they had, chances are high they would not have had to issue the following statement when Carroll’s video went viral: is has struck a chord with us. We are in conversations with one another to make what happened right, and while we mutually agree that this should have been xed much sooner, Dave Carroll’s excellent video provides United with a learning opportunity that we would like to use for training purposes to ensure all customers receive better service from us. 12 It is often said that you live and learn, but perhaps an equally important lesson for us all is that if you listen and learn, you live more harmoniously.

5 Discuss What Matters to Them At a dinner party, George Bernard Shaw sat next to a young man who proved to be a bore of historic proportions. After suffering through a seemingly interminable monologue, Shaw cut in to observe that between the two of them, they knew everything there was to know in the world. “How is that?” asked the young man. “Well,” said Shaw, “you seem to know everything except that you’re a bore. And I know that!” 1 Not quite the impression the young man was aiming for. But it proves an important point: when it comes to mattering to others, you must discuss what matters to them. Assume all else will fall on deaf, or in this case dull, ears. is is an interesting principle to consider given the spirit in which the vast majority of people communicate today. Most messages are primarily meant to educate others about our lives or our products, to reveal compelling portions of ourselves we think others would be attracted to. While this appears to be an assertive strategy, it is actually a passive strategy in that it requires others to connect with us. Like a banner ad on a website waiting to be clicked, we offer up digital ads of our best selves, hoping others will be compelled to engage. e trouble is, that’s marketing monologue, not relational dialogue. It’s assumption, not assimilation. When assumption guides our efforts to befriend or in uence others, the results end up on the wrong side of memorable. In 1810, U.S. general William Henry Harrison, then governor of the Indiana Territory, was negotiating with Tecumseh in order to try to prevent open hostilities. He ordered a chair to be brought for the Native American chief. e man who brought it said, “Your father, General Harrison, offers you a seat.” “My father!” Tecumseh exclaimed. “e sun is my father and the earth is my mother, and on her breast I will lie.” Ignoring the chair, he stretched himself out on the ground. 2

Today’s biggest enemy of lasting in uence is the sector of both personal and corporate musing that concerns itself with the art of creating impressions without consulting the science of need ascertainment. Not only is this method presumptuous, but it is a poor business tack. What the world needs more of— what Carnegie espoused seventy- ve years ago—is bridge-building dialogue. is begins when you ip the modern spirits of marketing and social media on their heads and begin all interactions with a mind for what matters to the other person. is starts, as we have said, with listening. Once you know what matters to others through a practice of longer listening, you can then truly engage them by putting such matters at the forefront of your interactions. If you’re talking business, this process is about putting the customer back into customer relationship management—an endeavor that blogger Doc Searls once pointed out is more often about management than the customer. 3 “Everyone is wrong about in uence,” writes power blogger and business strategist Valeria Maltoni, “except your customers.” ink about that before you get into trouble for not delivering meaningful results. . . . True in uence ows from drawing together people with shared interests. It’s a process of identifying areas of relevancy among your customers and prospects, community building and allowing others to amplify your in uence as you meet their needs. . . . You’ll be chasing the popular kids (even those who demur) until the cows come home if you keep thinking that in uence is about you. It’s not. And you don’t need the following of a celebrity to build something of signi cance. 4 You are ultimately building a community when you initiate interactions with what matters to others. And a community is what really matters to you, whether you’re building a brick-and-mortar business, launching a new brand, or planning an important reunion. Sure, there is an initial connection, and you need to make it. But much of marketing and social media today is only about the connection point—gaining another follower, notching another fan, claiming another customer. Often forgotten is the long-term plan. Businesses

call it a customer retention strategy, but it is best thought of as a lively, meaningful dialogue among a community of friends. If the foundation of all long-term success is the establishment of trust-based relationships, then the goal of all interactions should be to convey value as soon and as often as possible. ere are common hurdles to overcome. Jason travels to Senegal’s most remote regions a few times a year. He rst traveled with a nonpro t that led him there. He returns today because he still learns there. Recently one of the village elders pulled him aside on a 115- degree afternoon to ask him a most urgent question: How did people in North America live? Jason explained that most lived in individual houses somewhat akin to the huts in the village. Others lived in apartments stacked on top of and next to each other to form bigger buildings. “And all of these homes,” the elder inquired, “they have walls all around?” Yes, replied Jason. “But why?” “To keep themselves safe from bad weather and sometimes from bad people and to protect the things in their home and to give privacy.” “Oh, no, no, no,” the elder replied. “at is backward.” In their village, he explained, they had torn down the walls to keep themselves safe. “You see, too many things hide behind walls. If we tear down the walls for all to see, then we are all safer.” We live in a modern world, and in the modern world we put up walls. ere are rewalls for our computers, mortar walls for our estates, and wood and wire fences for our farms and family yards. en there is the great wall of diffuse social interaction. It can lead to a level of in uence that exists outside relationship—an in uence founded on followership but not friendship. Open Leadership author and social media maven Charlene Li warns about the danger of such forti ed digital in uence. In a recent interview she noted the biggest concern—a false sense of security. “ere is a difference between a friend and a fan,” she explained. “Fans have a smaller sense of commitment, smaller levels of interest. ere is a continuum of loyalty whereby fans stand at

one end and friends at the other. In uence occurs across the continuum but it is more certain and lasting on the friends’ end.” 5 e easiest way to prove Li’s point is to go online and try to buy a Facebook friend. It can’t be done. Companies galore will sell you Facebook fans, and they can assure you of lots of Twitter followers, but leave it to social media to shine a bright light on the great truth that no true friend can be bought. “When are we going to learn that millions of followers does not always equal in uence?” blogged Canadian Mitch Joel, author of Six Pixels of Separation and one of the iMedia 25: Internet Marketing Leaders and Innovators. It’s a game (err . . . business) that worked well until the proper analytics and platforms were put in place. . . . [S]maller, stronger groups are where in uence lies. . . . e brands that are winning “true in uence” . . . are winning (as opposed to #winning) because they have people who are having real interactions with other real human beings (and those interactions are truly meaningful). . . . [I]t is much more practical/realistic for businesses to think about using these opportunities to connect and have a sincere engagement instead of trying to rack up their numbers. 6 Newton Minow was the in uential head of the Federal Communications Commission under President John F. Kennedy. He later went on to serve in various other prestigious public and private sector jobs. When asked what his secret was, he said that it all came down to his college major. He’d majored in semantics—the study of meaning. Semantics isn’t simply about words; it’s about the context in which those words are used. It’s about understanding. He once remarked that 99 percent of all con icts are about the misunderstanding of words used in different contexts. His success, therefore, came from trying diligently to understand what someone meant. 7 e endeavor is all the more signi cant today because when Mark Zuckerberg decided to call everyone on Facebook “friends” he made a semantic choice that is easily misunderstood. e human brain—to say nothing of the

human heart—cannot process hundreds of friends. According to Oxford University professor of evolutionary anthropology Robin Dunbar, the size of our brain limits our ability to manage social circles to around 150 friends, regardless of our sociability. Dunbar has looked at Facebook and found it to be true online as well. “e interesting thing is that you can have 1,500 friends but when you actually look at traffic on sites, you see people maintain the same inner circle of around 150 people that we observe in the real world.” 8 But here it is important to introduce Dunbar to Minow, because Dunbar de nes a friend as someone you care about and contact at least once a year. Distinctions must be made, for while we cannot have 150 intimate friends, we can have 150 in uential relationships. Intimate friendships possess deep commitment and are based on great risk — rst comes the risk of believing that we are people who matter enough, who are weighty enough, to in uence others’ lives. If we do not understand the signi cance of our presence, we can never give anyone the present of our lives. But an equally great risk is that having intimate friends opens us up to being deeply hurt by those friends. Some people protect themselves from relational pain by having no intimate friends. Others do it by having so many shallow friends that a hurt in icted by one is diffused by the mass. e bottom line is that relationship involves risk, and if we want to in uence other people’s lives, we have to be comfortable accepting that risk. While the amount we give of ourselves varies based on the relational intimacy we are seeking, risk is always implicit in the process of moving people from curious followers to certain friends with whom you have in uence that transcends transactional trends. Once you know what matters to others through a practice of listening, placing your matters in a holding pattern is the only way to truly engage others with a steady diet of what they care about. And as with most meaningful risks, the reward is commensurate. Subsequent in uence is more potent, and there soon comes a time when what matters to you matters to them. Jamie Tworkowski understands. In 2002 a friend named Renee was using the same razor blade to line her cocaine and cut her arms. Depressed, alone,

and surrounded by “friends” who were spiraling down with her, Renee was not long for this world. Jamie, an unassuming surfboard sales rep, stepped in and with a group of friends intervened in Renee’s world. Eschewing emotional risk, they tried to give her the gift of presence. ey bought her coffee and cigarettes, they gave her music, they surrounded her with love. ey wondered what it would be like if, instead of her cutting a self-loathing, four-letter moniker into her arm, they could write love on her arms. Jamie’s friendship with Renee led him to design some T-shirts to sell to support the cost of her recovery program. His friendship with the lead singer of a popular rock band led him to ask a favor of the front man: “Wear one of our T-shirts onstage.” e musician did. Nearly a decade later, Renee is clean and Jamie’s organization, To Write Love on Her Arms, sells nearly $3 million in T-shirts a year and invests that money in numerous recovery programs. More than 200,000 follow Jamie on Twitter and Facebook. But he knows most are curious fans and followers. A much smaller number are friends, such as Renee. He has some slight in uence with those who follow him; yet it is shallower than the in uence he has with his friends, and mostly eeting. He accepts this and celebrates that there are others in the world also doing good things worthy of following. He has strong in uence with his friends; this is the malleable setting in which he chooses to reside. It is this place—different for everyone—where you must reside, whether you’re a multinational corporation or an individual change agent. e distinction between your friends and your followers is an important one to consider when seeking to make a lasting impression on others. ere are those in this world with whom you have earned signi cant in uence; they are a gift and a responsibility. You should not only know who they are but also always know what matters to them. e gift is what they bring to you; value it. e responsibility is to lead your relationship somewhere meaningful to both of you—but at the very least, to them.

“A brand’s ability to have its message put in front of millions of people begins and ends with that impression,” concludes Mitch Joel in his aforementioned blog post. We (as a public) seem to believe that the in uence comes from the sheer volume of impressions and connections that we have in the marketplace. . . . It doesn’t. True in uence comes from connecting to the individuals, nurturing those relationships, adding real value to the other [people]’s lives and doing anything and everything to serve them, so that when the time comes for you to make an ask, there is someone there to lend a hand. Worry less about how many people you are connected to and worry a whole lot more about who you are connected to, who they are and what you are doing to value and honor them. 9 Perhaps what is most meaningful to you, after all, is being meaningful to others. One thing is certain: In an age when the mass of messages multiplies daily, only a small number really matter. To in uence others, make sure yours are among them.

6 Leave Others a Little Better “He called himself Mike,” began blogger and consummate Building Champions business coach Steve Scanlon as he relayed a story he loves to share. “My wife, Raffa, and I were staying a few blocks south of Central Park, and we’d hailed his cab to embark on an annual dining tradition in Little Italy. Our timing was terrible. It was Halloween, and the already crowded streets were twice full. As Mike chopped his way through midtown and lower Manhattan it was apparent our plans would need to change. He suggested Greenwich Village, and we agreed. A few minutes later he dropped us at a Village curb, recommended three restaurants, and then rolled back into the crawling mass. I thought it was the last we’d seen of him.” 1 But, as Scanlon likes to say with a smile, Mike thought differently. As they enjoyed their meal, Scanlon reached for the front pocket of his pants. He patted here and there, and there and here. His phone was missing. He panicked as he suddenly remembered where it was. Resignation set in as he imagined the misery of canceling his account, losing valuable contact information, and buying a new phone. He dialed his number from his wife’s phone, expecting to hear his own recording. Instead, a gentle Indian accent answered. “Hulloo?” “Who’s this?” Scanlon snapped, brusquer than intended. “ees is Mike,” the voice said. Scanlon took a breath and fumbled through an explanation that ended with them needing to catch a ight home very soon. “My goodness,” Mike replied, “your phone is very important. I will come as quickly as I can.” He then coordinated a street corner meeting and promised to hurry. Scanlon turned to his wife in amazement and relief and explained what was happening. When Mike pulled to the curb twenty minutes later and delivered the phone, Scanlon put $80 in the cabbie’s hand—all the cash on him.

“He was humbled,” explained Scanlon, “but I wanted him to know how outstanding the act was. He hadn’t mentioned money once. Turning off his meter and going way out of his way to help an irresponsible customer was extraordinary—I’d have given him twice the cash if I had it on me.” is cabbie’s small act of service made a big impact; it turned a nightmare into noteworthy experience. Scanlon calls what Mike did “small-picture thinking.” It is the foundation of leaving others a little better. Somewhere along the way, we were taught to keep the big picture at the forefront of our minds. We learned the bene ts of setting big goals, making big connections and closing big deals. Today, the most common big picture may be gaining a big following. And while such big pictures have value, if our minds are focused only on big payoffs, we will overlook the small opportunities that make the biggest difference. We will miss chances to go a little deeper, to connect a little tighter, to make others feel that much better about their relationship with us. “e point,” explained Scanlon, “is not that big-picture thinking is bad. It is a necessary piece of progress—especially with people—but it alone is not enough to reach your big goals.” Many steps come between what we sow and what we reap. Most are small seeds planted in the small moments of every day. Consider the sales manager at Macy’s who cast a big vision to double women’s shoe sales in June. ere would be a big summer sale, he explained, and in combination with a big push in upselling, that would turn out big results. What resulted, unfortunately, was no big deal. June 1 came, and his sales force stopped listening to the customers’ stories. ey stopped being sensitive to customers’ budgets and considerate of their time. Instead they began shing for big opportunities to suggest a more expensive shoe or a half-priced second pair or a matching accessory. By month’s end, total sales had decreased by 8 percent. What went wrong? A typical sales manager might blame his sales team for lack of execution. is particular manager pointed the nger at himself. What could he have done differently? He realized his big-picture obsession had taken his team’s

focus off the small actions that would make it a reality. It is a common mistake. Fortunately, this particular manager had a second chance. A few months later, Macy’s was having a Labor Day sale. e sales manager took a different approach. He painted the same big picture—double the previous month’s sales—but this time he described the small details within the big picture. He asked his people to look for every opportunity to serve their customers: walk them to the bathroom, hold their babies, park their strollers behind the counter, be mindful of their time commitments and budget constraints. Instead of focusing on what they were selling, the sales team should focus on making their customers’ days a little better, whether or not they bought shoes. What do you think happened? Total sales for September were 40 percent higher than August. It was not a doubling of sales—a goal even the manager admitted was quite lofty—but it was 50 percent better than the same effort in June. Most important, it was progress. e difference was in the details. e big picture didn’t change. e salespeople’s focus did. Instead of looking for the big sell, they sought small, meaningful ways to leave people a little better. e smaller seeds sown meaningfully reaped a bigger harvest. Many people make the mistake of equating inspiration with implementation. ey are like an art teacher who sets his students down in an alpine meadow and asks them to reproduce the glorious landscape. e big picture is inspiring: long swaying grass, white aspens with shimmering golden leaves, a brook winding toward the backdrop of snowcapped mountains. But merely seeing the picture does not equip the students to skillfully depict one blade of grass on the canvas. Without instruction in painting each small detail in that big picture, their efforts will look nothing like that picturesque meadow before them. To become great artists who can replicate the big picture, the students must learn to focus on the small particulars. Nowhere in life is this truer than in human relations. Who doesn’t have grand plans for certain partnerships, collaborative efforts, or friendships? A marriage proposal is nothing if not a vision for the future of the relationship. A collaboration agreement is nothing if not a vision for the future of the business partnership. An employment agreement is nothing more

than a vision of the great work an employer and employee can accomplish together. But is it enough to wax poetic about your love for the woman? Is it enough to promise great customer service, relevant content, or valuable support? It is said that Leonardo da Vinci began painting Mona Lisa in 1503 and did not nish until 1519. Some art historians speculate he spent much of that span considering and crafting the enigmatic smile that has been the centerpiece of conversation for ve centuries. e famous smile now adorns its own $7.5 million room in the Louvre, where 6 million visitors pay their respects each year. e painting’s value is estimated in the ballpark of half a billion U.S. dollars, though most claim she is priceless. 2 What would Mona Lisa be without its most famous detail? A big picture that never realized its potential. In the same respect, your biggest and best intentions—for a relationship, for your followership, for a company or collaborative endeavor—will regularly fall short of their potential if your inspirational intentions do not translate into small acts of service and value. “Most business people treat customer service like an ad campaign,” said Scanlon. “ey post it, promise it, and promote it. But unless they produce it in small increments every day, customer service is only lip service.” It is Mona Lisa without the smile—a nice effort but not that different from anything, or anyone, else. What you must always remember is that what motivates you to win friends is rarely what motivates others to grant you friendship. You are motivated by what can be achieved with others’ loyalty or support or collaborative effort. You are motivated by the big picture of connection and collaboration—by how things can be. In contrast, those with whom you want to connect and collaborate see only the small pictures of their own experience with you. ey see the true measure of your motives in bytes and feats. ey are motivated by how things are. Others are constantly asking of you: “How valuable is my relationship with this person?” “What have you done for me lately?” still guides the mind of the masses, perhaps more so today amid the backdrop of millions of messages and

messengers vying for attention. is does not suggest, as some believe, that you must continually outdo yourself or that you must parade as a spectacle. It simply means that the secret to all interpersonal progress is adding value, and doing so with regularity. Unfortunately, “in the digital age winning friends has come to be about marketing, about standing out, about being signi cant,” said legendary peak performance coach Tony Robbins in a recent interview. “ere are two ways to be signi cant,” he explained, “do something really well or do something really poorly. Unfortunately, infamy is the easiest way to get known today. Technology gives us the incredible power to connect with, learn from, and add value to any person on the planet 24/7, and yet we can burn someone or be foolish and get signi cance instantly. It is unfortunate many people choose that path.” 3 Besides the obvious relational consequences of this tack, the strategic problem is that there is no shortage of provocative items being broadcast in the digital age. Between media outlets, marketing campaigns. and me- rst digital manners, your competition on the stage of sustaining interest is colossal. And the rewards are famously shallow. e real key to winning friends and in uencing people today, says Robbins, is “moving relationships from manipulative to meaningful. e only way you do that is by constantly adding meaning and value.” is is the scale on which every one of your interactions is judged—every tweet, post, email, call, and tangible encounter. To which side does your scale tip in each encounter—toward more value or less value? To which side does your scale tip over time? at is perhaps the more important question, because we all make mistakes. We have bad days. Still, the fallout of interpersonal failures can be swifter and more merciless than it has ever been before. For that reason alone, it is wisest to do everything within your power—through every medium and every message—to leave others a little better. While we certainly have some room for error, it’s more of a laundry room than a grand ballroom. How many times has a mere glance put a relationship on the fritz? Various traditions tell of gods and goddesses of justice. emis, a Titan, was an organizer of communal affairs. Dike was the Greek goddess of justice, who weighed right and wrong. Justitia was the Roman personi cation of justice,

forced to ascend to the heavens because of the wrongdoing of mortals. Ma’at was the Egyptian goddess who held the universe in order until the moment of creation and then became a heavenly regulator. Out of these gods and goddesses arose a modern personi cation of Justice, the blindfolded, sword-holding, scale-bearing image associated with Western judicial systems. Her message couldn’t be simpler: truth must be weighed on a case-by-case basis for truth to prevail. A subtler message is this: anything can tip the scales. ere isn’t an idle argument or irrelevant fact in a case. e scales of justice measure it all. What’s true in justice holds true in human relationships. ere are no neutral exchanges. You leave someone either a little better or a little worse. Jordan was assessing his divorce a decade after it occurred, on the eve of his second wedding. A friend asked why his rst one failed. It was, he said, because he neglected the scales. Every single interaction with his spouse sent her one of two messages—that she was the most important person in the world to him or that she wasn’t. He’d sent the latter message far too often. It is unrealistic to expect every exchange with every person to be lifealtering. But your scale still tips one way or another every day. Knowing this should give you plenty of reasons to pay attention to every message you send. Placing this high a priority on altruism would set you apart in this digital age. New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote a column called “High-Five Nation” in which he contrasted the humility on display after Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II with what we see on display today. “On the day of victory, fascism had stood for grandiosity, pomposity, boasting and zeal. e allied propaganda mills had also produced their fair share of polemical excess. By 1945, everybody was sick of that. ere was a mass hunger for a public style that was understated, self-abnegating, modest and spare.” 4 Humility, and the sense that others should occupy our minds as much as if not more than we do, was part of the culture of that era. Over time the sentiment began to change, writes Brooks. “Instead of being humble before God and history, moral salvation could be found through intimate contact with oneself . . . self-exposure and self-love became ways to win shares in the competition for attention.” 5

Certainly some people have gained attention today—perhaps “notoriety” is a better word—by worshipping themselves and creating a culture of celebrity around themselves. Some make millions off this strategy. But what is our impression of such people? Do they in uence others for good? Perhaps after all the attention, they point people to a cultural good, which is better than nothing. But such people serve primarily as provocateurs. Like wine before a bland meal, they prepare our palate for nothing substantial. ere is one thing that hasn’t changed over the millennia—something philosophers from every culture have concluded. It is as old as history itself. Zoroaster taught it to his followers in Persia 2,500 years ago. Confucius preached it in China 2,400 years ago. Lao-tse taught it to his disciples in the Valley of the Han. Buddha preached it on the bank of the holy Ganges around the same time. e sacred books of Hinduism taught it 1,000 years before that. ey all concluded: Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want them to do to you. Two thousand years ago Jesus put a slightly different spin on it: “Do to others what you would have them do to you.” 6 It is the only rule in human history we call golden. An ironic advantage of our digital age is that many people hold a notion of superiority, which affords you a simple way to make a lasting impression: show them in some subtle way they are right. ey are far more likely to return the favor. “You know why I like you, Ike?” Winston Churchill asked President Dwight Eisenhower, who had labored, more or less harmoniously, alongside the strong personalities of Bernard Law Montgomery, Charles de Gaulle, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. “Because you ain’t no glory hopper.” 7 Always leave people a little better, and you might be surprised how big it makes you and how far it takes you.

P a r t 3 H o w t o M e r i t a n d M a i n t a i n O t h e r s ’ Tr u s t

1 Avoid Arguments In their book e Preacher and the Presidents, coauthors Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy detail the Reverend Billy Graham’s path of unlikely ascendance and unmatched in uence with not only seven U.S. presidents but also nearly every other global leader in the Western world. is path, they point out, was not without its resistance, especially early on. How Graham dealt with one of his staunchest opponents provides a preview of the rst principle necessary for winning others’ trust. “In February 1954,” they write, “Graham’s patron Henry Luce wrote to TIME’s man in London, the legendary correspondent Andre Laguerre, to prepare him for what was about to come when Graham landed in London for a spring crusade.” is was a time when church membership was much lower in Britain (between 5 and 15 percent of the population) than it was in the United States (59 percent). “ ‘Religion in Britain is near death,’ Luce noted, ‘so Billy’s impact will be worth watching. . . . Surely he will be scorned by all the people you know.’” One of those scorners, explain Gibbs and Duffy, was a columnist from the Daily Mirror, “a man named William Connor, who called Graham ‘Hollywood’s version of John the Baptist.’ As he often did with prominent critics, Graham suggested they meet in person; Connor mischievously suggested a rendezvous at a pub called the Baptist’s Head.” As it turned out, neither Luce, Laguerre, nor Connor could estimate the effect Graham would have on the city. “So many people came the rst week that from then on he held three meetings at Harringay Stadium on Saturdays. . . . Night after night eleven thousand people sat and another thousand stood, in rain or sleet or cold, to hear him preach.” His audience included members of Parliament, an admiral, and the navy chief of staff. Nor could the journalists estimate the effect Graham would have on them personally—especially William Connor. After meeting the preacher for a chat at the irreverently named pub, Connor the critic became Connor the admirer.